Naples, the City of Parthenope, and its Environs ... Illustrated

Front matter

Panorama os Naples from the Vomero. NAPLES THE CITY OF PARTHENOPE ana ttg Œnbitw BY CLARA ERSKINE CLEMENT AUTHOR OF "THE QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC," "HANDBOOK OF LEGENDARY AND MYTHOLOGICAL ART," " LIFE OF CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN," ETC. VEDI NAPOLI E POI MORI Illustrated LONDON GAY AND BIRD 5 CHANDOS STREET, WEST STRAND I894 {All rights reserved.) Copyright, 1894, BV ESTES AND LAURIAT All rights reserved. 3Hmtorts'tp lEJrcss: Iohn Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. Hear then, oil, hear the sea-maid's airy shell; Listen, oh, listen! 't is the siren sings, — The spirit of the deep, — Parthenope, — She who did once i' the dreamy days of old Sport on these golden sands beneath the moon, Or poured the ravishing music of her song Over the silent waters, and bequeathed To all these sunny capes and dazzling shores Her own immortal beauty and her name.

Anna Jameson, CONTENTS. Chapteb Page I. The Beginning of a Nation and a Language . . 1 II. From Frederick II. to Charles V. 1198-1516 . 11 III. Charles V. and Philip II. 1516-1598 58 IV. Philip III. and Philip IV. 1598-1647 85 V. Masaniello's Rebellion. 1647-1700 108 VI. Carlo Borbone and Ferdinand IV. 1700-1806 . 136 VII. Joseph Bonaparte, Joachim Murat, Ferdinand I., and Francis I. 1806-1830 164 VIII. Ferdinand II., Francis IL, Garibaldi, Victor Emanuel, and Humbert I. 1830-1894 .... 189 IX. Neapolitan Life 205 X. Neapolitan Life — continued 2*26 XI. Neapolitan Art and Letters 244 XII. Pozzuoli, Baiæ, Cumæ, Procida, and Ischia . . 261 XIII. Herculaneum, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Sorrento, La Cava, Amalfi, Salerno, and Pæstum .... 282 XIV. The Island of Capri 297 Index LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Page Panorama of Naples from the Vomero Frontispiece Interior of the Church at Santa Chiara 25 The Island of Nisida 34 The Heights of San Martino from the Mole 59 The Porta Capuana 66 The Castel dell' Ovo 76 Neapolitan Costumes 101 The Theatre of San Carlo 142 The Castle of Ischia 169 Santa Lucia 217 Galleria Umberto 1 220 Virgil's Tomb 263 The Amphitheatre at Pozzuoli 271 The Temple of Venus and Diana at Baiæ 275 Looking down the Street of the Tombs, Pompeii .... 282 The House of Pansa, Pompeii 285 Panorama of Sorrento 290 The Temple of Neptune at Pæstum 295 The Steps at Capri 321 The Blue Grotto of Capri L NAPLES AND ITS ENVIRONS.

Chapter I. The Beginning Of

A NATION AND A LANGUAGE. LONG centuries ago, when sirens dwelt on islands and naiads haunted rivers and springs, when nymphs thronged in forest glades where trees oft held imprisoned dryads, when sibyls made their homes in caves and grottos, the peninsula of Naples was a favorite haunt of these mysterious beings ; and we can but count the Fates most kind to Parthenope when she was cast upon a shore so fitting for her home. That she should here have built her Neapolis — New City — and here have been buried, as Strabo tells us, seems but what any siren, ancient or modern, would have done had she the power. Here were the Elysian and the Phlegræan Fields : the first — " Clothed in the delicate atmosphere of Spring, Sprouting with young vines, redolent of the fruit And flower of orange, true Hesperian gold, And the wide whisper of the violet ; " while in sad contrast the second stood — " Where Titan force still heaves The uncertain bases of the vernal hills ; Volcanic bowls, smouldering and boiling yet, Or brimmed with cool oblivion of the wave."

Here, too, was Lake Avernus, very " gate of hell," through which Ulysses passed to gloomier shades below ; and here Amsanctus, then as now exhaling death. Of Avernus, Virgil says, — " Deep in the craggy gorge a cavern yawned ; A pitchy lake and forests black as night Girdled its depths profound. No bird unharmed O'er that dread orifice might steer its flight, — Such baneful exhalation through the air Reeked from its murky jaws. And famed Manduria's well, — as Pliny saw it, still it is ; draw off or pour within a constant stream, and still the water stands at the same height. Through this charmed land the magic Crathis flowed o'er sands of gold, and those who bathed therein had ever after hair like golden threads by fairies spun. Here, too, that other river with its seven streams, in which Orestes bathed, and lost the foul stains of his mother's blood ; and here the fountain of Artacia, where Ulysses met the daughter of the Læstrygonian king.

Historic mountains tower in all this land, and promon tories rise from out its seas that have been famed since poets and historians sang and wrote. Horace tells of the wondrous bees and honey of Mons Matinus, and of the shipwreck of Archytas on the shore below, and begs each passer-by to help in covering the unburied corpse, — " O sailor-man, these bones, this skull to hide, Grudge not a handful of the drifting sand ; So may the East-wind on Venusia blow, And spare thee on the waters far away. Just guerdon for thy care may Jove bestow, And Neptune, guardian of Tarentum's bay. But if thou turn a deaf ear to my prayer, Surely thy children's fortune shall be wrecked, And thou, for lack of charity, shalt bear The just requital of a like neglect. No expiation shall undo the wrong, No lustral waters purify thy heart ; The boon I ask will not delay thee long, — Three handfuls of gray dust, and then depart."

To the height of Gaeta, Virgil has given undying interest, — the burial-place of Caieta, the unforgotten nurse of brave Æneas ; and to that other promontory, world renowned, which bears his pilot's name, — as the Cumæan Sibyl promised that eternally it should, — the headland of Palinurus. Far to the southeast, in old Lucania, the mountains of La Sila furnish masts and timber to shipbuilders now, as in the ancient days to the Athenians. There still lie per petual snows, and, lower down, the same impenetrable for ests, rich pastoral plains, and beautiful ravines that Strabo describes and Virgil clothes in graceful imagery. Volcanoes too are there : that Vese vus that still lives, — which Goethe called a peak of hell rising from Paradise, — and others that have died, hold their place in the story of this land ; a place of " horrors on horrors multiplied," such as it would seem could only be wrought by furious, im prisoned giants.

Here rose a chain of temples sacred to the gods of Greece, many of which even now delight us, ruined as they are. Still towers there, in its majestic loneliness, one column of that fane, founded by Hercules, where Juno Laciuia was worshipped. So sacred was it held that Pyrrhus and Hannibal alike feared to profane its shrines, rich as they were ; and upon its walls the great Cartha ginian inscribed his victories in Greek and Punic charac ters. Even the immortal Zeuxis contributed to its adorning, and near by, at Croton, — famous alike for its beautiful women and its wrestlers in the Olympic games, — he sought a model for his picture of the divine Helen. The temple of Proserpine stood in that grove now known as La Selva di Agatocle, where it is said that the dread goddess gathered flowers and wove them into garlands.

The sites of numberless shrines are known, and each contributes its peculiar part to the surpassing interest of this peninsula. Along its coasts are islands and rocks whose fame is as old as the written words of classic song, — the Arimos of Homer and Inarime of Virgil, where Typhœus makes his bed beneath Epopeus ; Prochyta, " broken off " from Arimos by the mighty struggles of the father of bad winds ; and Capreæ, or Cephorim, with all its storied heights and wondrous grottos, not far from the dreaded island of the sirens. Circehad warned Ulysses of his danger ; and yet, so sweetly did they sing, that had he not been fast bound he would have made a willing victim to their wiles. Yet still farther south are found those rocky straits of which Ulysses was again forewarned : — " No mariner can boast That he has passed by Scylla with a crew Unharmed ; she snatches from the deck, and bears Away in each grim mouth, a living man.

Another rock, Ulysses, thou wilt see, Of lower height, so near her that a spear, Cast by the hand, might reach it. On it grows A huge wild fig-tree with luxuriant leaves. Below, Charybdis, of immortal birth, Draws the dark water down ; for thrice a day She gives it forth, and thrice with fearful whirl She draws it in. Oh, be it not thy lot To come while the dark water rushes down ! Even Neptune could not then deliver thee. Then turn thy course with speed toward Scylla's rock, And pass that way ; 't were better far that six Should perish from the ship than all be lost." Thus, from the northernmost point to Capo Spartivento, from Capo di Leuca to Terracina, one re-reads his classics and his history in what he sees around him. No words written now could better portray the natural features of this land than do those of Homer, Strabo, Horace, and Virgil; while all around it flow the seas made so fami liar to us in our youth, — those waters which Palinurus watched ; and when he saw them calm, the heavens serene, and the stars bright with gold, his clear signal called his friends to strike their tents and " fly with winged sails."

" And ' Italy ' rings first Achates' voice, and Italy with shouts Of joy my comrades greet. My father then Wreathes a great cup, and fills it up with wine, And, standing in the stern, invokes the gods : ' Ye potent deities of sea and land, And of the storms, grant us a passage safe, And favoring breezes.' Soon the wished-for winds Freshen, and wider grows the harbor now ; Minerva's temple on a height appears ; We furl the sails, and turn our prows to land." It is said that over the Vergillus Hannibal erected a bridge of human bodies, and the plain near by is still called the Pezzo di Sangue ; and Belisarius, unable to conquer Naples with its walls which had withstood Pyrrhus, Hanni bal, and Spartacus, turned aside the waters of the aqueduct, and, entering by it, brought upon the city its first calamity.

In this Neapolitan territory the Roman army, humbled by the Samnites, passed the Caudine Forks ; and innumerable heroic achievements have here had place, which are recounted to the wonder and delight of each new generation as they learn of ancient days when gods and men as giants walked the earth. Besides the tales of sibyls and sirens and " spirits from the vasty deep," both good and evil, with which these coasts abound, we find that Hercules at Boaulia built the stables for the oxen of Geryon, and that the bow and ar rows of this god of strength were suspended in the temple of Apollo Alæus, built by Philoctetes on the Punta dell' Alice. But of all these marvellous tales of fact and fancy none are more unusual and memorable than that of the death and burial of Alaric, King of the Goths, suddenly arrested in his triumphant course when seeking further conquests.

Fearing that his grave might be violated, his followers determined to render that impossible, and afforded him a burial such as no other hero is known to have had. Gibbon says : — " The ferocious character of the Barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero whose valor and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause. By the labor of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus. The royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed ; the waters were then restored to their natural channel, and the secret spot where the remains of Alaric had been deposited was forever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners who had been employed to execute the work." Turn ye the waters from their course, Bid Nature yield to human force, And hollow in the torrent's bed A chamber for the mighty dead.

The work is done, — the captive's hand Hath well obeyed his lord's command. Within that royal tomb are cast The richest trophies of the past, The wealth of many a stately dome, The gold and gems of plundered Rome ; And when the midnight stars are beaming, And ocean waves in stillness gleaming, Stern in their grief, his warriors bear The Chastener of the Nations there, To rest at length from victory's toil, Alone, with all an Empire's spoil 1 Then the freed current's rushing wave Rolls o'er the secret of the grave ; Then streams the martyred captives' blood To crimson that sepulchral flood, Whose conscious tide alone shall keep The mystery in its bosom deep. Time hath passed on since then, and swept From earth the urns where heroes slept ; Temples of gods and domes of kings Are mouldering with forgotten things ; Yet shall not ages e'er molest The viewless home of Alaric's rest : Still rolls, like them, the unfailing river, The guardian of his dust forever.

Felicia Hemans. It is difficult to put aside the fascinating story of the ancient days, and turn our attention to the modern life of this peninsula. It would require volumes to describe in detail the marvellous events of which history and tradition make it the actual scene ; and many of them are character ized by such heroic romance as has rarely been excelled in any land. We are tempted to echo the words of Dr. John son : " The great object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean, on which were the four great em pires of the world, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman." It is not for us to attempt to fix the dates at which colo nies of various ancient races — nor, indeed, those at which the Latin peoples — came to Southern Italy. It is believed that Cumæ was settled by Phœnicians 1400 b. c, and that it was not a new city three centuries later is a well-established fact.

Sybaris was founded 720 B. c, and it is cer tain that the Marsi, Samnites, Brutii, Lucanians, Calabri, Greeks, and others settled here at remote periods ; while later, the descendants of the ancient Italian tribes were mingled with those of Greeks, Lombards, Normans, Sara cens, Provencals, and Spaniards. This mixture of races has produced a people in many respects remarkable ; and men learned in such matters claim that even now, especially in the more isolated districts, habits and customs exist which can be traced to these remote ancestors. The Marsi afford an example of the truth of this. The banks of Lake Fucinus,1 near which they dwelt, abounded with asps and vipers, and the water with snakes, which the Marsi were skilled in charming, — as Virgil describes (Æneid, VIL), — and still in various parts of Southern Italy their descendants are seen support ing themselves on what they gain as snake-charmers.

In the third century b. c. the Romans were masters of the peninsula; after the fall of the Western Empire, Goths, Lombards, and Romans of the Eastern Empire were power ful in turn, until, in a. d. 1042, the Normans became sole masters of the land. It cannot be said, however, that they established a government until Robert Guiscard, in a quarter of a century (1060-1085), united the detached sovereignties within the Neapolitan territory, and trans mitted to his successor a kingdom sufficiently organized to be maintained and strengthened, until, in 1127, under the nephew of Robert Guiscard, — Roger IL, the great Count of Sicily, — a monarchy was founded which united Sicily and the Neapolitan territory, and remained under the rule of the Normans until it passed to the House of Hohen staufen in 1194.

In spite of the incursions of Romans, Ostrogoths, and Lombards, and the conquests of Normans and Suabians, the customs of the ancestors of this people, such as that to which we have referred, and notably the ancient language, obstinately survived. After the earlier Samnite and Oscan tongues were lost, Greek retained its hold, and was the lan guage of the people among themselves long after they had found it needful to make Latin their mercantile tongue ; 1 Drained by Prince Torlonia, who opened the tunnel on which thirty thou sand men had worked eleven years in the time of the Emperor Claudius. The modern work was done in thirteen years, and finished in 1875. The re claimed land, thirty-six thousand acres, is now a model farm, colonized by families from the Torlonia estates. from this custom arose the Roman term for the Neapoli tans, Bilingues.

Even now the traveller and the student who are interested in such matters will find that Renan spoke truly, when he said, " If we wish to see the life of Greece prolonging itself to our own days, it is to Sicily and to the Bay of Naples that we must go." Not until the early part of the thirteenth century, during the reign of Frederick IL, who founded the University of Naples, did the modern Italian language begin to be formed. The first dawn of Italian literature appeared in the territory of Naples among its Greek colonies ; and a long and noble line of writers, who greatly enriched the learning of the world, were born here. Zaleucus declares himself a native of Locri ; Pythagoras of Croton, where he established his school of philosophy ; Archytas was of Tarentum, and Alexis of Sibarum. Of later authors, Ennius, Cicero, Sallust, Vitruvius, Ovid, Horace, and Cassiodorus, as well as men famed for their science and learning, first saw the light beneath the skies of the Neapolitan peninsula.

Thus, almost twenty-five hundred years later than the earliest dates we have mentioned, more than ten centuries after the birth of Jesus Christ, and nearly a thousand years after Saint Paul had brought the knowledge of the Chris tian religion to these shores ; after millions of human beings had here acted their parts for good or evil in the drama of the universe, and various Southern races had followed their customs in life and death ; after many his toric scenes in barbarous and deadly wars, and numberless celebrations of the most exciting games and exquisite festivals of peace, — the Normans came, full of energy, to found a kingdom, to be shortly superseded by Teutons, who not only strengthened the empire, but gave a beautiful common language to these descendants of many nations, and estab lished the institutions of civilization in their midst.

It is a curious and interesting fact that while there are remarkable remains of Cyclopean and Pelasgic architecture in the Neapolitan territory, while existing ruins show the magnificence of the ancient temples erected here, while mural painting and mosaic and bronze work reached a rare perfection under Byzantine influence, while during the centuries immediately preceding and following the beginning of the Christian era many famous authors were born in the cities of this peninsula, yet, since those days, but a slight impression has been made on the art and literature of the world by native Southern Italians, while in more northern Italy art has reached the most glorious heights it has attained since the time of Pericles, and lit erature has been enriched and ennobled by famous scholars and immortal poets.

Having thus traced the merest outline of the origin of the Neapolitans and of the first steps in the evolution of their nation and language, we turn to the more prosaic time when their history is no longer veiled by myths and traditions, — a time when sirens, sibyls, and fairy folk of all degrees found this paradise of land and sky and sea no longer to their taste, and fled, we know not whither, leaving the country of Parthenope to a far less fascinating and more tangible people.

Chapter II. From Frederick II

TO CHARLES V. 1198-1516. FREDERICK II., sometimes called "The Wonder of the World," is an important figure in mediæval history. He was the grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, and inherited the kingdom of Naples and Sicily through his mother Con stance, daughter of Roger II. of the Norman dynasty. His father, Henry VI., was in his full career of vice and op pression when Frederick was born in Sicily, in 1194, and died when the child was but three years old ; a year later Constance also died, and the infant king was left to the guardianship of the Pope. From his very cradle circumstances combined to fix attention upon him. On account of his mother's age, his birth was likened to those of Isaac, Samuel, and John the Baptist ; he was a sovereign from his infancy, heir to the vast power and possessions of the Norman kings and the Suabian emperors.

Married when fifteen years old, he was the father of a future emperor at eighteen, and after many experiences freighted with great importance to all Christendom, but not appertaining strictly to our present subject, he was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Honorius. This was one of the few occasions when such a coronation was accomplished peacefully, and there were many reasons why it was not to be expected in this case ; but it may be accounted for on the supposition that although he was the Emperor of the Germans, having been born within the borders of Italy, of a Sicilian mother, he was expected to make the southern portion of his realm first in his care and affection. During the childhood of Frederick, Sicily was the scene of fierce contentions between the German and Saracen troops and the soldiers sent to quiet them by Pope Inno cent III. ; and not until Frederick himself came into full power was a wiser policy inaugurated.

He transplanted the Saracens to the city of Lucera in Apulia, and to Nocera in Campania, where they became his most trusty soldiers ; they were loyal to him, and could not be influenced by the threats or the promised rewards of pope or priest. In Sicily Frederick established a legal despotism, and sub dued both Normans and Infidels, the two turbulent and rebellious classes. His life was passed amid contentions and quarrels with different Popes, and he was accused of being a traitor to the Church and to his people. But these matters had little or no effect upon his reign in Naples and Sicily, where he must have found more abundant recompense for his cares and anxieties, and greater personal happiness in the early years of his sovereignty, than elsewhere in any portion of his life. He not only founded the University of Naples and laid the foundation of the Italian language, but he interested himself in the universities of Bologna and Salerno as well ; he encouraged native literature by his own writing of Italian poetry, and generously devoted him self to the intellectual upbuilding of the kingdom of his birth.

The old English historian, Matthew Paris, calls him " the most remarkable man of a remarkable age ; " and Freeman says : — " We do not say the greatest, still less the best, man of his time, but, as Matthew Paris calls him, the most wonderful man ; the man, in short, who was in all things the most unlike to all the other men who were about him. It is probable that there never lived a human being endowed with greater natural gifts, or whose natural gifts were, according to the means afforded him by his age, more sedulously cultivated, than the last Emperor of the House of Suabia. There seems to be no aspect of human nature that was not developed to the highest degree in his person. In versatility of gifts, in what we may call many-sidedness of character, he appears as a sort of mediæval Alkibiades, while he was far removed from Alkibiades' utter lack of principle or steadiness of any kind.

Warrior, states man, lawgiver, scholar, there was nothing in the compass of the political or intellectual world of his age which he failed to grasp. ... Of all men, Frederick II. might have been expected to be the founder of something, the beginner of some new era, political or intellectual. . . . But the most gifted of the sons of men has left behind him no such memory. . . . Frederick, in fact, founded nothing, and he sowed the seeds of the destruc tion of many things. ... In fact, in whatever aspect we look at Frederick II. we find him, not the first, but the last, of every series to which he belongs. . . . He was the last prince in whose style the Imperial titles do not seem a mockery ; he was the last under whose rule the three Imperial kingdoms retained any practical connection with one another and with the ancient capital of all.

Frederick, who sent his trophies to Rome to be guarded by his own subjects in his own city, was a Roman Cæsar in a sense in which no other Emperor was after him. And he was not only the last Emperor of the whole Empire ; he might also be called the last King of its several Kingdoms. After his time Burgundy vanishes as a kingdom ; . . . Italy, too, after Frederick, vanishes as a kingdom ; any later exercise of the royal authority in Italy was some thing which came and went wholly by fits and starts. . . . Germany did not utterly vanish, or utterly split in pieces, like the sister kingdoms ; but after Frederick came the Great Interregnum, and after the Great Interregnum the royal power in Germany never was what it had been before. In his heredi tary Kingdom of Sicily he was not absolutely the last of his dynasty, for his son Manfred ruled prosperously and gloriously for some years after his death.

But it is none the less clear that from Frederick's time the Sicilian Kingdom was doomed ; it was marked out to be, what it has been ever since, divided, reunited, divided again, tossed to and fro between one foreign sovereign and another. Still more conspicuously than all was Frederick the last Christian King of Jerusalem, the last bap tized man who really ruled the Holy Land or wore a crown in the Holy City. And yet, strangely enough, it was at Jeru salem, if anywhere, that Frederick might claim in some measure the honors of a founder. If he was the last more than nominal King of Jerusalem, he was also, after a considerable interval, the first; he recovered the kingdom by his own address, and, if he lost it, its loss was, of all the misfortunes of his reign, that which could be with the least justice at tributed to him as a fault.

In the world of elegant letters Frederick has some claim to be looked on as the founder of that modern Italian language and literature which first assumed a distinctive shape at his Sicilian court. . . . It is a significant fact that one who in mere genius, in mere accomplishments, was surely the greatest prince who ever wore a crown, a prince who held the greatest place on earth, and who was concerned during a long reign in some of the greatest transactions of one of the greatest ages, seems never, even from his own flatterers, to have received that title of Great which has been so lavishly bestowed on far smaller men. The world instinctively felt that Frederick, by nature the more than peer of Alexander, of Constantine, and of Charles, had left behind him no such creation as they left, and had not influenced the world as they influenced it.

He was stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis, but the name of Fridericus Magnus was kept in store for a prince of quite another age and house, who, whatever else we say of him, at least showed that he had learned the art of Themistokles, and knew how to change a small state into a great one." Since many of the most important events in the life of Frederick II. , and especially the most interesting question of his religious beliefs, have no bearing upon the story of Naples, we can here give but this meagre bint of the rare attractions of a full record of his remarkable life. This great Emperor died in 1250, and was buried in the Cathedral of Palermo, where his wife, Constance of Aragon, also reposes. In 1783, more than five centuries after his burial, the sarcophagus of Frederick was opened, and his remains found in a good state of preservation.

Frederick II. was succeeded by his son Conrad, whose reign of four years was a period of violence. This king devoted himself to contending with William of Holland for the imperial crown, and made his illegitimate brother, Manfred, his regent in Italy ; although hated by Conrad, Manfred bravely and faithfully defended his brother's rights against Pope Innocent IV. At Conrad's death, his infant son, Conradin, became king, and Manfred continued to govern in his name, and in 1258, on a rumor of the young king's death, was himself made King of Naples and Sicily, and crowned at Palermo in August of that year. Manfred made an alliance with the Ghibellines which largely increased his power, but he was continually under the displeasure of the Popes, and led a stormy and turbulent life. Early in his reign he was forced to fly from the curses of the Pontiff to the protection of the Saracens whom his father had placed at Lucera.